Oh, The Cowboy and the Driller Should be Friends (should be friends)

Today's Denver Post also carries a story about the conflicts between natural gas drillers and ranchers, who often don't own the mineral rights to their ranges. The water that methane drilling produces is often too salty for plants, although evidently people and cattle can tolerate it. So much of it is produced that it often floods productive land, too.

Key points: 1) the drilling is lucrative enough that the drillers want to find a way to solve the problem so they can keep their contracts. 2) the people defending the land are working farmers and ranchers, showing once again that the best stewards of the land, long-term, are the people who have to live on it.